Q&A with J.J. Abrams

Successful television directors usually make the transition to film with small projects. Lost and Alias creator J. J. Abrams instead dove headfirst into the latest Tom Cruise tent pole, M:i:III. This month Abrams tests whether his character-driven approach will play to the billion-dollar action-movie-franchise audience.

ESQ: You've said you weren't a big fan of the first two Mission Impossible films.

JA: I just said that the first films weren't what I was interested in doing. I wanted to do something closer to what the old TV series did, which was focus on the characters and the entire group that came together rather than just the one guy.

ESQ: How did Cruise's public persona match up to the guy you worked with?

JA: When we met, we just talked about movies and family, and it hit me: Wait, he's Tom Cruise. How bizarre is that? He's so famous. I said to him, "Isn't it weird that you're Tom Cruise?" He just laughed.

ESQ: Evangeline Lilly told us that you have an outline for six seasons of Lost. True?

JA: We made a bible when we first started that plotted out arcs of stories over years. We decided early on that Lost wouldn't be about just one answer; these are overlapping stories that connect in some ways and don't connect in others. Lost is never going to be The Sixth Sense.

ESQ: Do you read any of the incredible amount of Internet speculation?

ESQ: I like the theory that the show is an allegorical version of the Patriot Act.

JA: [Laughs] We might have to change the course of the series and make it that.

ESQ: Have you ever incorporated story lines you've read on the Internet?

JA: No, but there have been occasions when we've written a script and thought we were so clever, and then we go online and someone's posted an exact hypothesis of what's coming next. I've seen theories that come suspiciously close, but I've never read a post that nails it all.

ESQ: By the way, Evangeline also told us she's sick of all the nudie scenes.